Identifying Dead Baby Pulled From East River Poses Challenges to Police

NEW YORK — The baby boy whose body was found alone in the waters beneath the Brooklyn Bridge on Sunday, was surrounded, in death, by teams of investigators the following day, seeking to learn how he came to be there. Detectives searched video hoping to glimpse his final moments alive and doctors hovered over his small body.

On Monday, there were few new clues: The boy’s age was estimated at between 6 and 9 months, his race Hispanic or black, the police said. An examination was conducted, but further testing was required to determine the cause of death, a spokeswoman for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner said.

It remains unknown whether the boy was dead before he entered the water, or whether he drowned. It is standard procedure, when a drowned baby is found, to search for a drowned adult in the area, under the theory that they entered the water together and became separated. No other bodies were found in the East River on Monday and, by late afternoon, the police presence there had cleared out.

The boy was found Sunday afternoon near the South Street Seaport, a popular destination for tourists. Indeed, it was a family of tourists from Oklahoma who spotted the body floating face up, wearing only a diaper. One of the tourists, Monte Campbell, tried to revive the baby using CPR, and when officers arrived they joined him, but the boy was pronounced dead at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Lower Manhattan a short time later.

The investigation will likely explore several avenues at once, with a search of the neighborhood’s many video cameras likely first and foremost.

A distinct challenge to identifying a dead baby is the fact that, compared to adults, few people know them. “They don’t have any fingerprints,” said Lt. John Grimpel of the Police Department’s public information office.

“No parents have come forward,” he said. “They’re not as easily identifiable as a full-grown human.”

In 1993, a newborn girl’s body, just hours old, was found in a trash bag in an apartment building’s courtyard in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a dish towel wrapped around her neck. The police released a sketch of the baby’s face and the towel as recently as 2016, to no avail. There have been no arrests in the case.

Investigators in the high-profile case of “Baby Hope” were likewise unable, for decades, to identify the young victim, in this case a 4-year-old girl whose body was found in a picnic cooler near the Henry Hudson Parkway in Manhattan in 1991. It would be 22 years before new leads and a DNA match led investigators to identify her mother and learn the child’s true name, Anjélica Castillo. Her cousin, Conrado Juárez, was charged with her murder. He is awaiting trial.